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The Audi A3 e-tron is a plug-in hybrid that’s good enough to make you want to make the switch to electric motoring

Headline writers rejoiced at the resurgence of electric cars, for there are few easier ways to score a quick pun. “The Toyota Prius takes charge!”

“Down to the wire in Nissan’s Leaf!”

“Renault’s view of electric avenue!”

Shocking, I know, but the game’s finally up. Electric car technology is at the tipping point where it will move beyond being this funny thing at the fringe of the automotive industry, to something you and I will seriously consider buying. And no car represents that shift better than the new Audi A3 E-tron.

With the proliferation of plug-in hybrids, whereby a car has a traditional engine, an electric motor and a big battery which can be charged from the mains, we are seeing how this technology can finally carry several key advantages over the motor car as we know it.

Consider these nuggets: the A3 E-tron’s 31-mile electric range is big enough to cover what for many is a typical commute, meaning that if you have somewhere to charge the car either at work or at home (a process that takes just over two hours from a wall box or four hours from a domestic socket), you need never use any petrol in day-to-day driving. Yet because there is also a turbocharged 1.4-litre petrol engine, you also need never suffer the dreaded range anxiety; an A3 E-tron will travel more than 500 miles between fill ups. Gone, then, are two of the primary drawbacks of electric cars.

Then there are the fringe benefits which, thanks to CO2 emissions in EU tests of just 37g/km, include being exempt from vehicle excise duty and the London congestion charge, and for company car users a benefit-in-kind rating of just 5 per cent.

Performance isn’t bad, either: thanks to its 201bhp and 258lb ft of torque, 0-62mph takes just 7.6sec, and you’re never left short of urge. This is no Golf GTI beater, but it’s got enough go to make overtaking a breeze.

Financially, once you’ve accepted the £29,950 asking price, the hurdles have seemingly been hurdled (before you scoff, plenty of people will happily spend upwards of £25,000 on a diesel A3 Sportback, and the e-tron is also very well equipped as standard).

Not that this would count for much if the e-tron was overly complicated to understand and underwhelming to drive, but it is neither.

Before getting into that, though, let’s take a quick step back to consider the hardware that makes these numbers possible. Based on the five-door A3 Sportback, the e-tron places a 75kW electric motor between the engine and gearbox, while in a safety cell under the rear seats is an 8.8 kWh lithium-ion battery. Packaging things this way means moving the 40-litre fuel tank slightly, the result being that boot space drops by 100 litres to a total of 280 litres.

The battery can be charged either by being plugged in (the socket is neatly hidden behind one of the four rings on the Audi’s grille), by recovering energy otherwise lost when coasting or braking, or by using the the 148bhp turbocharged 1.4-litre petrol engine as a generator. To the driver, these functions manifest themselves in four main modes, which can be juggled between via a switch on the dash.

Mode one, "EV", works up to 80mph, although you’ll chew through the battery if you use it like that. In "Auto" mode the car decides how best to manage its power, which in our test resulted in fuel economy in excess of 60mpg. "Hold" switches off the electric motor to save the battery for later in the journey (for when entering an urban area, for example), and running in this mode resulted in economy of 37mpg.

Finally, there’s "Charge", which uses the petrol engine to drive the car and as a generator to charge the battery, and is thus largely pointless until the day arrives when city centres become zero-emission zones. For reference, in this mode, fuel economy dropped to 29mpg.

So no, chances are you won't get the 176.6mpg the e-tron achieved in EU tests, but it can still be tremendously efficient.

To drive, the most obvious way the e-tron differs from a Toyota Prius, which at one time looked set to become the Hoover of the hybrid world, is that it swaps that car’s CVT gearbox for a dual-clutch automatic. And because this has proper ratios, it makes the e-tron feel, for the most part, completely normal. What’s more, those things about it that aren’t normal, like the silent running in electric mode and extra bit of boost you get when you push the accelerator all the way to the floor, all add something to the experience.

The Audi A3 E-tron averages almost 180mpg in official tests

Aside from that, and the way the car recoups energy from low speeds by slowing slightly when you lift off the accelerator, the e-tron drives much like any other A3, with decent steering, a balanced chassis and a supple ride over all but the biggest and sharpest of bumps. Even the brakes dodge the pitfall of feeling weird or snatchy as they recover energy for the battery. It really is a triumph.

Of course, it’s no secret that the Audi A3 is essentially a posher Volkswagen Golf (no small achievement these days), nor that you can have all of this E-tron running gear in the slightly cheaper Golf GTE plug-in hybrid. But as the A3’s mere existence proves, a posher Golf is exactly what some people want.

And yes, elements of the technology will date faster than your new smartphone, but as the battery has an eight-year warranty to complement the rest of the car’s standard three-year, unlimited mileage cover, you can still be confident of long-term performance.

That to drive the A3 E-tron feels so normal is both its greatest strength and its biggest weakness. If you want an electric car to feel like something new and exciting then your money will be better spent on a BMW i3. But if all you’re after are the benefits of electric propulsion without any gimmicks then this Audi has just taken the lead - no pun intended.